Thoughts on nature, meditation and cabin life

April 2016

April 25, 2016

Driving up to the cabin last week, I entered into a winter wonderland, what could have been a Christmas postcard, except that it was the middle of April.

Allenspark had reportedly received 32 inches of snow from the previous weekend’s big dump.

Meeker Park had only maybe 2 feet, and it was melting rapidly, but it was enough that I had to dig a path from the driveway to the cabin, enough so all the trees and cabins were covered, even smothered, in layers of snow.

When I snowshoed up the unplowed Coyote Hill Road, it was like pushing through wet concrete. The air was warm, the snow heavy. But the pleasure of being in a landscape so purely white made my efforts worth it.

I guess I couldn’t get enough of (hopefully) winter's last hurrah, so the next day I hiked the Deer Mountain trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, where you can get a panoramic view of the mountains all around: Longs Peak (top), Glacier Gorge, the Bear Lake drainage, the mountains surrounding the Fall River Road up toward the visitor center on top of Trail Ridge, and Twin Sisters to the southeast. Whole basins, valleys, foothills and mountains were full up with snow.

But by the end of the day I had enough of snow and winter. I was ready for something easier, something sweeter. After the hike, I headed back down the valley, where spring—green fields, pink and white-blossomed trees, red and yellow tulips—were waiting. Good-bye winter.

April 18, 2016

Walking with a friend around Meeker Park this week, he stopped at one point and asked if I wanted to keep going. For me, it’s a silly question because I always want to keep going. Once I start walking I never want to stop. I always want to know what there is to see, even if I’ve walked this path a hundred times before. And my legs have a mind of their own. Something propels them forward, like a wind-up toy that’s been set free.

I know lots of people who go to the gym every day, use the machines and feel self-righteous about this form of self-punishment. But why would you want to be in a building, huffing and puffing while watching cars pull in and out of parking lot, when you can be outside, where all your senses are awakened and filled?

Walking around Meeker Park last week, the sound of water was everywhere, as melting snow filled up the low places in the meadow and overflowed into the small creeks that rushed toward the plains. From the trees and sky came new bird calls—either birds migrating through, arriving for spring or wooing the females with spring-only refrains. And the melting snow has released a swarm of smells: from the pines, for one, but also something pungent and rich from the earth. On my face I feel the coolness of the wind and warmth of the sun.

Some people might say that taking the same walk is boring, but every day the landscape changes—the skies always, and even Mount Meeker—that solid, immovable fortress of stone—changes with the clouds, the light, the seasons. And, as spring slowly starts to creep in, then rushes faster and faster every day, I can hardly keep up with all the new growth: shoots of grass under last year’s brown stalks, bursts of color under the pine trees where the first pasqueflowers (top) have emerged under the protection of these branches; small white flowers that hug the hillsides.

This love of walking must be partly hereditary. When we were children, my father would take us for walks in the forest preserves near our suburban home. Even in his old age, he would walk the halls of the retirement home where he and my mom lived. Like me, he was curious: who was out and about—playing cards or pool? What stories could he hear?

When my father, now 94, recently had to start using a wheelchair, he told my Mom that he didn’t want to live if he couldn’t walk. I know what he meant. Luckily, with the aid of physical therapy and a walker, he’s able to walk down the hall—all the way from his apartment to the health clinic. In the meantime, Dad, I’m walking these trails for both of us

April 12, 2016

I come to the cabin to clear my head but also to ground myself. After a hard week of getting my parents moved, hiring and training caregivers, dealing with different drug plans, and consulting with doctors and nurses, my brain felt over-stimulated, constantly on high alert, trying to figure out the next step in a plan of action to make my aging parents comfortable. I couldn’t turn it off.

When I left Boulder for the mountains this week, it was a beautiful spring morning, daffodils pushing up, robins and meadowlarks singing, the fields brushed with a faint green. But when I got to the cabin, it was winter once again, snow squalls followed by brief periods of sun, and with strong winds that bent the trees and made the whole cabin creak. Across the valley, the winds created a curtain of snow that partially hid the opposite hillside.

Rare for me, I didn’t want to go out into it, even after three hours of sitting in front of my computer. Instead I wanted to curl up in the chair, wrap myself in a blanket and watch the wintry assault from safely and warmly inside the cabin. But I needed to move, couldn’t sit still anymore.

April is an ugly month up here. Remnants of snow are crusted over and covered with pine needles and dirt. Everything is raw; last year’s grasses have been beaten into submission by the wind, tangled and matted in the dirt. There’s nothing pretty now, nothing pleasant and hardly anything that would give one hope for spring except the rushing of the creek.

I hurried on the road, and through piles of slush, trying to avoid getting blasted by the wind, keeping my head down. My usual sources of inspiration were unavailable. Mount Meeker was hidden in gray clouds, and my favorite pond (above) was colorless, covered with sheets of melting ice.

But there was something insistent in the air, something tugging at me, something else beyond my jumbled thoughts: listen, it said, be aware, pay attention. And when I let go of my obsessive thoughts, I could hear it. It was in the wind (that sounded sometimes like a jet roar), but also in the small chirps of the juncos feeding on the ground (right) and in the blackbirds’ raucous calls as they circled above the pines. It was in the creek, free now from the ice and tumbling joyfully and playfully down the valley.

It was the voice of another world, another reality from the one I had been locked in for a week. It was spacious and open, not bound by the rules of the human world but of another dimension. You could call it the natural world. Whatever it was, it pulled me out of my small, constricted life and propelled me into something else, something unconcerned with Medicare, wheelchairs, even old age, sickness and death, because the sky, the earth and the winds felt eternal, never-ending. Whatever this life force is, it heals me and makes me whole again, sets me back on the ground that I must trod.